Full Circle or, Serendipity
by Kendra A
Summary: After the evilness that was the S6 finale, we need some sweetness. Willow/Xander friendship, reminiscent of the good old days except for the angst. (*Award-Winning Fic!*)


**Title**: Full Circle _or_, Serendipity

**Author**: Kendra A. (kendraangelusslayer@yahoo.com) [http://www.iceblur.dot.nu] 

**Rating**: PG – 13 (one naughty word)

**Pairing**: Must you really? I don't think there is one. It's some good old-fashioned Willow/Xander friendship because, _really_, there hasn't been enough of that lately. 

**Summary**: Willow being contemplative and Xander being (gasp!) introspective. Lots o' Scooby love, nostalgia, minor Buffy-bashing, total denial of Giles' return, and—again—lots o' Scooby love. Because we need it.

**Spoilers**: No season goes untouched. This takes place after the camera leaves Willow and Xander hugging and crying at the end of "Two To Go"/"Grave."

**Author's Notes**: I am the last person I ever expected to write Willow/Xander _anything_ because, ah, that relationship scares me silly, but look! Fic not too dark (be realistic, how "light" can you be after "Grave?"). I've been in need of some proper, realistic Scooby Gang friendship—you know, the kind you could find at slayerette.org in the Good Old Days of Seasons 3 and 4—so I've written some myself. The Willow/Buffy bonding can be found in my new, silly, musical Willow/Spike fic "Everyday;" if you want some Willow/Tara/Buffy/Spike/Xander/Anya/Dawn/Giles bonding, tough cookies. Go write it yourself. =) Actually, that's not a half bad idea. Go! Shoo! Wait—read this first.

**Dedication**: The usual. Len and Lisa/Firedrake/Devyn (what _are_ you calling yourself these days?) because you guys rock. You rock the rock and talk the talk and can you tell I'm tired? Wow. But—and sorry for the neglect, Len—this is _especially_ for Lisa because she started a sequel to "Pixie"! Hoorah! Can I hear a round of applause? You can find this lovely little continuation at her site, "The Dragon's Cave," at http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/firedrake , and eventually at my own site. I hope.

**Dedication # 2**: To Danie, a.k.a. Xandergurl, a.k.a. Faith Harris, a.k.a. the second third of our little Slayer trio—Kendra Angelus (yes, folks, the "A" does stand for something), Faith Harris and Buffy the Bloody forever, no matter how dumb we may look—because you agreed with me that we needed some Scooby love and because you noticed that Alyson Hannigan's stunt double in "Two To Go" looked a heck of a lot like Eliza Dushku's… And because I knew that Sophia Crawford wasn't SMG's stunt double anymore and you didn't. 

How weird am I?

**Quiknote**: This fic is first in Willow's POV, then in third person, and then in Xander's POV. It's mostly stream-of-consciousness, which is supposed to be an excuse for my weird punctuation. I hope you like. Please R&R.

NOW: On to the fic!

I need you now

Do you think you can cope

You've figured me out

That I'm lost and I'm hopeless

I'm bleeding and broken

Though I've never spoken

I've come undone

- Matchbox Twenty, "Mad Season"

All I can hear now is the rushing of the wind and my own crying.

All I can feel now are Xander's soft strong arms squeezing me tight and the cramping in my fingers as I clutch at his shirt.

All I can see is… nothing. I can see nothing because my eyes are shut so tight the tears can hardly find their own way out.

All I can smell is Xander—sweat, and cologne, and just the bitterest hint of fear. I love him so much for that fear. I love him for saving the world and for being there with me and for saying he loves me and oh, I can feel he means it and right now that's all that matters.

How long has it been since Buffy has said she loves me? Certainly she hasn't been cuddle-queen since she found out about me and Tara. It still made her uncomfortable, I think, even after we lived in the same house with her, acted normal, cut down on the lovey-dovey…

Tara.

Tara loved me. She said so, she promised, she said she'd always be there for me but she's gone.

So soon after it all finally started working again she's gone. We were kissing, we were cuddling, it was warm and fuzzy and sweet and beautiful—she was so beautiful—and now she's carted off in some black body bag to God knows where and I'm here, bent and broken and I'm nothing without her.

Wait.

That's not true.

I _was_ nothing without her because I was also without Xander. I was without Buffy and Dawn and especially without Giles, because even though we all talked every day—even though Buffy and Dawn and I lived in the same house—there was a distance. It was like those private-school dances you hear about, where you're not allowed to dance with someone with less than a foot of empty air between you…

I have missed Xander so much. He's changed so much—he almost got married for God's sake, how did this happen so fast? I could still kiss him. I can still imagine sitting up straighter and pressing my lips to his but I can't do that, it's taboo, he loves Anya and I love Tara and besides, we tried that already and how far did it get us…? 

But still, the thought's still there and that's what counts. It's good to know that no matter what happens some things won't change, that I'll always have a crush, no matter how teeny-tiny and resistable, on Xander Harris, and that maybe he'll always have a teeny-tiny crush on me. It's nice to think so. I hope he does. I hope it's a sweet feeling, one that sort of lingers there in the back of his mind, something he contemplates on rainy days but doesn't really realistically consider, something we can save until we're old and gray, and maybe we can confess our crushes when we're eighty-seven and then we can die together, happy and wrinkly. Maybe it'll be a sunny day when that happens. That would be nice. Maybe we'll have a dog. 

… And what am I thinking? Three minutes ago I was kamikaze witch-girl, _end the world_, _end the suffering_… End my suffering, more like it. What a suicide bombing, huh? That's a world record for you. Except there wouldn't be any world left. And now I'm thinking sixty-five years ahead… I used to do that all the time, think of how Xander and I would grow up and still be together.

Except now I'm not really thinking in terms of the sex, and of the white picket fence, and of the baby, and the minivan. What the Hell did I ever want a minivan for? They're so ugly… Like Xander's car. Whatever possessed him to get a purple car? I bet he loved it, though, and I wrecked it like I've wrecked everything else… I'll have to buy him a new one. Or help him fix his purple one. I can't even remember what I did to it, just flicked my wrist and turned my back as the hood collapsed in and the thing began to smoke.

I shot death at Xander and he survived. That idiot, what the fuck was he thinking, jumping in front of me like that? I suppose he heard some way to stop me, but he had no way of knowing. He could have gotten himself killed! I ought to kill him just for trying. What if I had killed Xander? What if I'd left him lying there at the base of that temple, burnt-ash and smoke and fire and blood… He's bleeding on me. Oh, Xander, what am I gonna do with you?

What am I gonna do with myself?

What is Buffy gonna do with me?

I'm freaking myself out already. She'll never forgive me, not really, no matter how much she may convince herself she has. Buffy's not the type who forgives and forgets, not like me, I've done that so many times and I think it's all that forgiving and forgetting that did it to me this time because how can you forgive a thing like what Warren did to Tara?

She was gone in just a second, out like a light switch. How can you just flick a person's life on or off? It's not natural. It wasn't natural. I gave Osiris something to remember, all right…

How can you forgive a thing like what I did to him?

How can you forgive a thing like what I did to Warren?

You don't, I guess. I don't really want forgiveness because no matter how the images might make me ill, I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry that he felt every nanosecond of every nanometer of that bullet entering his chest and I'm not sorry that I sewed his stupid big mouth closed and I'm not sorry that I ripped his pathetic skin of that disgusting body. I'm not sorry. I'll never be sorry. If there was anyone that deserved the revenge I rained down on him, it was Warren. Who does he think he is? 

And I know what he did to Katrina, too. Sick bastard. I'm glad he's dead. Incinerated. There's nothing left to prove he existed.

Except for Jonathan and what's-his-name. 

I'm glad I didn't kill them, at least. That's worth something. They were his cronies—his little sniveling henchmen—but I don't think they were that bad, underneath it all. Just pathetic. And obedient. Obedience like that is a sin. 

I remember Jonathan in high school. Poor kid. He was way worse off than I was on the food chain of Cordelia's empire. I don't remember Andrew at all. What was that about flying spider-monkeys, or something? Whatever. But the two of them basically did what I did—they took power when they could find it and then they used it. I can't hate them… much… for that. And Warren used them.

Warren used everybody.

I used Rack. I left his twitching, emptied body floating there like he floated me the first time I went. It's poetic justice. Except it's not justice. It's not even my business how he conducts his little junkie empire. So maybe it's just poetic. I doubt Dawn thinks so.

I used Giles.

I used Buffy.

I used Anya, I used Dawn. I fed off their fear. It was a better high than magic though I'll never tell them that. What I said when I made the mistake of opening my frozen blackened heart to Buffy was true. 

Willow was picked on in junior high school… and in high school… all the way to college… And guess what? Now Willow's a junkie.

The worst thing in the world is to be disgusted by yourself, and the only way things can be made better is to have a Xander.

I guess I'm lucky then. Not everybody has a Xander.

Poor baby. I love him so much. Why'd he go get all sentimental with that stupid crayon story? And it wasn't the yellow crayon, it was the blue one. I think. 

Whatever, it was probably yellow. But I cried all day because I'd broken that crayon. Now I'm crying for a couple of minutes because I tried to destroy the world.

…And because one of the only three people in that whole entire worthless world who made me feel worth something is gone. Well, two of them are gone, but I got over Oz because there was Tara.

Correction: I got over Xander because there was Oz, I got over Oz because there was Tara, and I suppose if I ever get over Tara there'll be Xander again. Full circle, everything circles around, I've got it written down in my old Book of Shadows from back when I used to do things right.

Maybe it's a sign that I'm gonna start to do things right again. I hope so.

My fingers are really starting to hurt.

* * * 

Willow gently loosened her death-grip on Xander's forearm. He tensed and lifted his head, peering down at her worriedly. "Wills?"

She was still crying.

Xander sighed and gently pressed his own tear-streaked face against her hair. Her beautiful hair, her beautiful red hair, her beautiful not-scary not evil-witchy-dark-magic-psycho hair and could his thoughts get any dorkier?

"Wills? You okay?"

She made a sound that was probably supposed to be a giggle but came out more as a half-gasp, half-sob. "No. Are you?"

Xander grimaced slightly and shifted positions so that he wasn't squatting awkwardly above her anymore. "No. I think we will be, though. Maybe."

Willow shuffled into his lap like a kitten—something small, soft, craving love—and leaned her head onto his shoulder. She'd always sit like that, before. Before the fluke when they were still best friends.

"We're still best friends," Xander whispered to himself. He hadn't meant to say it out loud.

"We're still best friends," Willow echoed. Xander could feel a new wave of tears slide down her cheek and onto his neck. 

"We gonna sit here all day?" he asked casually.

There was a long pause. "Could we?" _I still have some figuring-out to do before I let Buffy kick my ass._

Xander smiled, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Willow felt his smile. They hadn't been this close since…

* * * 

Two really is company, I guess. Though three worked out before it became a crowd. Four, counting Giles. But then Angel and Cordelia and Oz came and it was this whole complicated thing and how long has it been since it was just her and me? And Jesse.

We never really mourned Jesse. Maybe we should, when we're done crying for Tara, who didn't deserve to die and for Warren, who did. Maybe when Willow's all right again. She'll be all right. She has to be.

Buffy never really knew Jesse, she didn't know what it was like, she was sympathetic though: but too overprotective. I guess Willow didn't trust us to do the vengeance thing right ever since Glory sucked out Tara's brain and all Buffy did was have a 'let's be rational' talk with her. It's only fair, I guess.

Poor Tara… She was always furthest out from the gang and always got the worst of the fights. I never knew her too well, I know she was nice, I know she loved Willow and I think that probably anyone who loves Willow enough for Willow to love them back is obviously a good person…

Though Willow loved me. 

It's kind of a nice thought that there's fate. Or destiny. Or like that John Cusack movie… Serendipity? Are me and Willow best friends because of Serendipity? I'd like that. Because it really seems like we've come full circle, back around after six whole years of demon-fighting and various significant others and an apocalypse or—what? Is it six now? That's an averted end-of-the-world every year. Not bad.

But it seems like in the end all we've done is end up where we started. In a good way, if you discount the death and the tears and the hatred and the bleeding and the pain. If all you look at is the life and the laughter and the love and the healing and the pleasure. Because there was a lot of all of that.

Willow and I grew apart, and further apart, and came together very quickly and then _flew_ apart, and then cautiously fixed it up again and then slowly drifted away and look at us now. Somehow we've lasted. That can't just be us. It has to be something. The Powers That Be, or something. Serendipity.

I guess there is a silver lining, although it's sick to think so. I'm as far from glad as I can possibly be that Tara's dead, and I'm even farther from glad that Anya and I ended it so badly. That I ended it so badly because you know what, it was right, it was my fault, and I love her so much but Jesus, marriage is _scary_. Willow would understand.

Would, nothing. She understands.

But about the silver lining—or maybe it's bronze or copper or something, at least compared to what had to happen—the silver lining is that Willow had to go psycho-kill-kill-kill girl, and I had to feel useless enough, and miss her enough, to come here, and now look. We got the good old warm and fuzzy feeling. It's full circle, all right. And I hate being all introspective, I'm not good at it, and then it leaves me with this creepy feeling like if I were introspective more often a lot more stuff would make sense.

I also get the nasty niggling sense that I could even find it in me to like Spike. Or Angel. Dear God, the introspective has got to stop.

Willow's so thin. I don't remember her ever being this thin but then I haven't given her a good hug in six years. 

I've gotta give her a lot more hugs from now on. 

END

Well? What did you think? Please, please, please take une petite moment to write back: my email is kendraangelusslayer@yahoo.com, or for those of you at a group or at fanfiction.net there's a little button below that you can click and scribble something real quick to make me happy. Please? I'm a negative feedback loop, I'm stimulated by feedback but I cease to write when there isn't any.

Sorry, that's a bad reaction to a bio test. =) Cheers, all.


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